Re: Turn software singlestep off?

[Michael Snyder <msnyder at specifix dot com>]

On Mon, 2008-06-23 at 22:58 -0400, Joel Brobecker wrote:
> > I thought there used to be, but now I can't find it.
> 
> I don't think there is such a switch either. I don't think it would
> be very hard to implement, though... And it could actually be useful
> on architectures such as Tru64 (I think) where we enable SW single step
> because the kernel stepping doesn't work for threaded program. Such
> a switch would probably give the user a chance to have better
> performance when debugging a program that doesn't use threads...
> It would be a pretty geeky switch, though, and I would be ready to
> bet that the number of people knowing about it would remain very small.

Thanks.  Sounds about right.

There could be other contexts where it would be useful.
Imagine you're talking to a remote target, but you (gdb)
don't really know what it is.

It could be a simulator.  Or a record/replay type of thing.
Something that wouldn't have a problem with singlestep, 
even though the native architecture would.

However, here's my real reason for asking:  I'm trying
to implement reverse debugging for mips.  Reverse
debugging and software singlestep don't mix very well.
GDB would have to figure out where to put the singlestep
breakpoint.  Singlestepping thru a jump, you can do that
going forward, but not going backward!   ;-)